1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a sample processing apparatus and a sample processing system and, more in particular, it relates to a sample processing apparatus and a sample processing system suitable to the use for processing process in a state where refinement of the processing is proceeded.
2. Related Background Art
In vacuum processing device, those apparatus of, for example, introducing an etching gas in a vacuum processing chamber, generating plasma discharge under a reduced pressure and reacting radicals or ions generated in the plasmas to a wafer surface as a material to be processed, thereby conducting etching have been known.
In the dry etching device conducting such processing, etching treatment is conducted under production conditions referred to as a recipe (for example, gas flow rate, gas pressure, charged power and etching time). The recipe is always kept constant in a specified production process (identical process) for semiconductor devices. Sometimes, the one process is divided into several steps and production conditions are changed on every steps. When a dry etching device conducts processing for a process in a semiconductor production step, wafer fabrication is conducted while constantly setting production conditions referred to as the recipe described above on every wafer processing.
Further, it has also been conducted to monitor etching conditions or etching state of a sample, sample an actual shape of a sample, inspecting the same by a measuring device and feed back the result to a sample processing apparatus.
In the recent dry etching process where refinement is, advanced, reaction products of wafers and etching gases are deposited on the inner wall of the processing chamber, unnecessary gases referred to as out gases are generated from the deposits, so that the circumstance in the processing chamber changes with time. Further, the circumstance in the processing chamber changes also by temperature change of parts concerned with the processing chamber and consumption of parts. As described above, various external disturbance factors are present in the dry etching device.
Further, scattering of the dimensional shape of a mask formed in a lithographic step as the preceding step to etching also gives a significant effect on the result of etching. That is, even when etching processing is conducted by using a constant recipe, it is difficult to obtain a predetermined performance because of various external disturbances.
Further, in the wafer sampling inspection and measurement by a measuring device, the measuring accuracy is improved as the number of measuring points increases. However, as the measuring accuracy is made higher, it takes more time for the measurement to reduce the throughput.